albatrosses
by Donna Rose
Summary: "But when he's not volunteering, he's there as a permanent fixture in the corner, drawing ghosts in his moleskin sketchbook." Coffee Shop AU, because I have nothing better to do with my life.
1. Chapter 1

a/n: Alternatively Titled: "Fic. Molly's Fic. AU, angsted not fluffed." courtesy of Grace, or sharpestsatire on tumblr. Without her, this fic would be abandoned a few sentences in. With her, it would have been a hell of a let less angsty.

* * *

Steve Rogers is something of a constant at Natasha's cafe. He comes after hospital volunteer work on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays, and before his volunteer slot at the foodbank on Thursdays. (He tries an animal shelter, too, before realizing just how allergic to cats he really is.)

But when he's not volunteering, he's there as a permanent fixture in the corner, drawing ghosts in his moleskin sketchbook.

He doesn't know what draws him to the little cafe. The coffee is good enough—though after five years of army coffee, he's not sure he's exactly a connoisseur. Maybe it's how quiet it is. Maybe it's how, though he's never really spoken to her, Natasha's smile grows warmer with every visit, from remembering his name to remembering his order, or simply the pleasantly home-y feel of it. The way it doesn't try too hard to be fancy, or corporate, or modern.

Maybe, he thinks that Peggy would like it.

He describes it in his e-mails to her, from the wide, stretching windows that either clatter with rain or let in so much light that Natasha turns off half the lamps, to the blue-and-white tiles in flowered patterns on the floor. He tells her how sometimes _Tony Stark _visits, and sometimes _Tony Stark_ smiles at him like Natasha smiles at him. How sometimes Tony Stark will make dumb jokes that he can overhear well enough to tell her about. When she can reply back, she says she's excited to visit, and that he should get Tony Stark's autograph while it's still worth anything.

Whatever the reason may or may not actually be, it remains one of the only places Steve goes to anymore.

(You should get out more, his therapist had said, however many Mondays ago.

Where would I go? He asked.

Go_ out._ Make _friends_. She repeated.

He had looked at her blankly because, he _has_ friends. Only one of them's in Afghanistan, and the other one is...well, says his church, _somewhere_.

The other one is in his sketchbook, in his nightmares, in his prayers.)

Some days, like today, he'll leave behind his books and his laptop and just come to sit in the chair by the window and watch. Watch the city bustle and move and live, watch mothers and fathers and sons and daughters and people who look like they have everything and people who surely must have nothing. When someone strikes him just-so, he'll draw them.

(His books are filled with portraits of people he'll never see again.)

He's drawing a woman, now, sketching her out in broad pencil strokes. She'd had an upturned nose and big eyes and worried brows, only she'd been walking past, so the best he can manage is a messy profile. It's a minute before he realizes that there's a shadow on the top half of the book, having been focused on trying to get the collar of the woman's blue coat to be pointed right. He looks up, not annoyed, but mostly curious, to see Natasha looming over, staring at his drawing intently. He smiles at her.

"Sorry," she says. She looks a bit startled, even if it had been she who'd been leaning over him. "I just—I always wonder what you're drawing."

He shakes his head to dismiss her apology.

"It's fine," he says. He's not insecure about his drawings—it's not something he takes seriously. They're all faces he doesn't own, so he can't properly be protective over them.

"It's good," she comments. Her fingers lightly brush the edge of the page appreciatively, then she taps it. "Is she someone you know?"

Steve shakes his head. "No, ma'am." His mother had always told him to be polite about addressing people. It sounds dated, even to his ears, but he's grown accustomed to it, and the Army had helped, too. "I don't draw people that I know."

Drawing people you knew put too much pressure on the drawing. You could never hope to capture everything about them in a single drawing. The way they laughed or moved, the way their mouths curved when they were happy or upset or the simple presence of a person were impossible to capture with graphite. When you didn't know what a person was like, you could project anything you wanted on them, make them look however you felt without really changing their appearance at all.

(The exception to him is only ever Bucky. Bucky is the difference between trying to draw a growing flower, attempting to capture all of its thriving beauty, and plucking it to press between pages, to preserve even after long being taken from its roots.)

Natasha nods, and taps the paper thoughtfully again.

"Is she someone you made up, then?" she asks. He shakes his head again.

"No, she's—" He begins, then stops for a second, words faltering and fading on his lips. It sounds stupid to say, "She walked past the window fifteen minutes ago, and I thought she looked sad, so I drew her." It sounds stupid to say that of anyone in his book.

"No, it's okay. She's yours, I shouldn't have asked," she says, drawing her hand back from the paper.

Steve shrugs. She's not at all, he thinks, but he still doesn't know how to phrase it.

Natasha shrugs back. "Which ever way, it's beautiful," she says. "D'you want some more coffee?" she offers. Steve's eyes flicker to the mostly-empty mug of coffee and then to his watch. He figures he can stay a little longer, finish his drawing before heading home.

"Yeah, that'd be great, thank-you," he answered. Natasha nods and grabs his mug from the corner of the table, and Steve turns back to his drawing. He starts to work more on the woman's face, and decides to draw her happier than she'd looked, walking in a rush past the cafe's window. He draws her eyebrows less furrowed, her mouth more upturned, and her eyes brighter, crinkled around the edges.

He wonders if the woman was sad or worried all of the time, or if she'd just been having an unfortunate day. He hopes for the latter, obviously, but he likes drawing people happier than they are. It feels like helping, almost, though that's ridiculous because he's not actually doing anything. Just drawing them differently than he sees them, it's no more helping than an author making up a perfectly happy character, only he supposes that he's less original than that.

He wonders what they would think if he'd found out what he'd done, if they'd laugh nervously or laugh honestly or be offended, in the way that people are if you seem to get too close to knowing them. Disarmed, maybe, caught off guard.

Natasha returns as he's brushing the eraser dust from the woman's nose, bringing his mug of coffee and setting it down next to him. Steve smiles at her.

"Thank-you," he repeats, taking the hot mug in his hands. "After so long enduring army coffee, yours is a welcome change."

"You were in the Army?" Natasha asks, curiously.

"Yeah," Steve answers, shrugging. Is, was. Same, difference.

He fully intends to go _back._

"Oh," Natasha says, lips pressed tightly like she wants to say more. "Then it's a comfort to know my coffee is better."

Steve gives her a gracious grin. "Trust me, it is."

Natasha bounces slightly on her toes, again like she'd like to say something more, but doesn't, or else doesn't have an excuse to leave but doesn't have anything else to say. And Steve would like to go back to his drawing, or else not sit awkwardly without anything to add.

Luckily, neither of them have to.

Tony Stark walks in with a flourish, with a ring of the bell that sits, waiting, on top of the door, and an audible_ clack! _of his black shoes that were probably worth more than the entire building they were sitting in.

Steve doesn't outwardly react to Tony, besides a smile, but there's still a boyish excitement to see someone so famous standing in front of you like any other normal person. You feel special—blessed, maybe—to be able to look at them. It was something you could tell your friends and family later, _guess who I saw! Tony Stark! Would you believe it?! _And even though Steve had seen him many times before, as often as he visited the cafe, the childish wonder at him had not yet completely gone.

"Having a party?" Tony asks, nodding towards Natasha and Steve.

Natasha gives him a pleasant, if long-suffering smile and Steve feels decidedly out of place with them, since clearly Natasha is comfortable with Tony in a way Steve is definitely not. He doesn't know much about them—except what he's tried dutifully to not overhear but still heard. Just that they're friends and he's not, and that Tony always gets the same black coffee that he himself does.

"I don't see how this is a party," says Natasha easily. Tony snorts.

"I don't know. Could be. Some weird Russian drawing party. Is he Russian, too?" Tony says, inclining his head towards Steve. Steve goes blank for a moment, unsure whether he's actually supposed to answer, or if Tony was being sarcastic, and also slightly surprised that Natasha was Russian. Her accent—or rather, lack there of, didn't give away anything but that she'd been raised here all of her life. Though he guesses the before, seemingly random, Russian pastries that she sold made more sense now.

"Uh—" Steve starts, still unsure. "No, I'm not...Russian, no." Tony makes a noncommittal noise and shrugs, hands in his pockets.

"Too bad. I can't pronounce half the stuff Nat's on about, honestly. Their language is ridiculous." Natasha rolls her eyes in response, and yes, Steve thinks, they _definitely_ have more of a history than just Stark visiting her cafe often enough to build a familiarity.

"Are you here for a coffee, or just to rag on my mother tongue?"

"I was hoping for a bit of both, actually. Actually," Tony repeats, "I_ am_ mostly here for coffee. And tea, for Pepper." Steve wonders who Pepper is, before a vague memory of some newspaper a few months ago that had mentioned her, something like a girlfriend. Wife, maybe. He remembers it was when he'd switched from weaponry to clean energy but he can't quite recall anything else.

Natasha nods. "Coffee run, then? I thought you had servants for that." _Servants? _Steve wonders. Maybe it's some sort of inside joke he's not in on.

"You should know. You were one of them."

Something of his confusion must show, because Natasha turns her head towards Steve. "I used to work as an assistant in Stark Industries," she explained, "Until he fired me." Ah. That certainly made more sense than anything else they could've meant by it. He just nods in response, still feeling like he was an unfortunate bystander in the conversation, rather than an active participant.

Tony holds up a finger in protest, mouth slack-jawed, before responding. "That was a _mercy_ firing, I think."

"Anything involving ending a relationship—be it familial, friendly, or purely professional—with you is a mercy, Stark," Natasha says smoothly. Steve raises an amused eyebrow, but doesn't laugh, just in case. It seemed rude, anyway, like laughing at a joke while eavesdropping.

Tony just looks highly offended, one hand splayed dramatically over his heart, and his eyes wide with fake surprise and hurt. "I'm offended!" he states. "Offended_ and _you still haven't taken my order. See if I ever come back here again, this is _horrible_ service."

"Where else are you going to go? Somewhere else you might have to_ pay_ for your coffee." Steve blinks. To his knowledge, Tony's got more money than practically the whole of New York City combined. He could pay for the whole of New York's coffee and_ then _some.

"How_ dare _you! There's a Starbucks not two miles from here."

"There's a Starbucks not two miles from everywhere, Stark," Natasha says, already walking off to the kitchen. Steve can't help but agree to that. "Black coffee and chai, right?" she calls back.

"When has it ever not been?" Tony replies, with a toothy grin, that must be entirely for show except no one's around to see it. Natasha doesn't answer back, maybe because she's already started on their coffees, or maybe only because she doesn't have anything to say to that.

Steve sits awkwardly, unsure of exactly what to do. He'd like, he thinks, to return to his drawing, but then that seems rude with someone in front of him.

"So," Tony begins, still with a cheeky grin, "Sorry for kind of third-wheeling you there. Didn't mean to. I'm Tony Stark. Gunna go off a limb, here, and say you know that." Steve blinks. It's not, generally, a thing someone is forward enough to apologize for, even if they feel bad. It wasn't like it was Tony's fault that Steve didn't know him at all, and only knew Natasha slightly more than he knew the people he drew.

"It's fine," he says, then shakes his head. "I'm Steve Rogers. I, er—know who you are." You'd have to be very sheltered to not have heard of Tony Stark, Steve thinks. Even as far away as he'd been, he knew who Tony Stark was.

Tony clucks his tongue. "'Course you do," he says—there's an odd sound of disappointment to his voice. "Anyway. Nice to meet you, Steve Rogers."

"You, too." Steve nods, since Tony didn't extend a hand to shake. There's silence for a moment, in which Steve doesn't stare and Tony doesn't bother trying to look like he's _not _staring. He taps his notebook with the eraser end of his pencil so as to have something to do with his hands. After a moment, he coughs and looks back up at Tony, who still hadn't bothered to not look like he was staring.

"So, uh," Steve tries. "How did you and Natasha meet?" He figures Natasha would be the only thing that they sort of have in common at this point.

"She was my assistant. Had scary-good qualifications—some kind of weird government job, I guess, that she's not allowed to tell me about," Tony says. Steve raises an eyebrow. She didn't really look like she would've had a government job—but then when Peggy was in her civvies and had make up on, neither did she, really, and her presence as a soldier was not to be diminished. "So, worked for me. Let's just say, I liked her too much to let her_ continue _working for me. Let her go with enough money to start whatever sort of business she wanted, and I get free coffee for life."

Ah, then. So that at least explains the "you'd have to pay for your coffee" comment.

"That sounds like a good arrangement," Steve says.

"Yeah, it's pretty great. So...you two, then. Friends? Lovers? Secret affair? Or are you like, spy buddies, because I'll be honest with you, Steve, she doesn't talk about you."

Steve shakes his head, laughing quietly. "No, no, nothing like that. I just come here a lot, I guess." They were acquaintances, at best. The most he knew about her now what her name, and thanks to Tony, her previous jobs, and all she knows about him was that he was in the army, and likes his coffee black.

Tony clucks his tongue and shakes his head, as if disappointed. "Damn. I could've really used some information on her. I've got nothing. I saw her _records_ and I still don't know anything."

Steve laughs, then, at the absurdity of it, shaking his head at Tony. "I'm sorry, I don't want to be rude, but why are you talking to me?" He can't think of why _Tony Stark_ would take an interest in him. Maybe he was just talking to talk. Some people were like that, Steve thinks. They were incapable of_ not_ talking to someone. For them, the awkwardness of not speaking outweighed the potential awkwardness of any conversation they could possibly have.

Tony shrugs and scratches the back of his neck. "I dunno. Nat was talking to you, so I'm talking to you. Good enough?"

Steve nods his head.

"Yeah, no, that's—that's fine. I just—you're _Tony Stark_." I'm _nobody, _he thinks.

Tony groans and rubs his forehead, as if this is something he's dealt with many times before. He probably had, come to think of it. "You make a couple bajillion dollars, maybe one or two robots, and all of the sudden you just can't—_talk_—to anyone," he mutters, mostly to himself, and there's a sadness to his voice, almost a tangible...loneliness.

Natasha returns with two paper cups in hand before Steve has the chance to apologize. Tony accepts them with a grin that looks falser than it did walking in and a thank-you that all but lacks a bow. He walks out with the same amount of flourish and dance as he did entering, though.

Steve shuts his notebook, the drawing of the woman half-finished and messy, and stands up to leave.

Natasha smiles at him. "Leaving so soon?" she asks.

"It's been two hours, around, hasn't it?" Steve says. Two hours his hardly soon, and he should get back to his house and—do something, he guesses. Eat dinner. Email Peggy, though he doesn't think she'll be able to respond for at least another week or two.

He'd sure like to know what she thought of this, if she got such a kick out of just smiling at Tony Stark, wait until she heard what happened today.

"I know. See you soon?" she asks.

Steve smiles at her and nods. "Of course."

* * *

The night that Baldur dies, there are two missed calls on Loki's cellphone.

He ignores them.

The day after, there are twelve. He needn't bother look at who was calling—it was always Thor, always Mother, and _once _Odin. (He nearly answered then, from pure shock. The phone had sat in his numb, shaking hand, but his fingers refused to press the answer button, so he simply stared at the buzzing phone until it ceased.)

He goes through his day as if he does not feel as if he has been drugged, somehow. As if his fingers do not feel too heavy and too light all at once as if the turning, moving, world isn't too loud like he doesn't wish it would just stop because can't they see what's lost? What they're _missing?_

It should be falling around him, _he_ should be, and yet the whole world turns just as in sync as it did the day before. He does, too—completes his daily routine and finishes his work and not once, does he stop to scream.


	2. Chapter 2

an: i'm stealing some canon from Matt Fraction's Hawkeye series. you won't need to read the comics to get it, but i'd highly highly suggest reading them just because it's a wonderful series. if you like it, please review. it make me happy c: with that said, on we go!

* * *

Clint Barton visits Natasha's cafe every morning before work.

(Natasha had joked that it's the only way she ever sees him anymore, and Clint had shrugged, warning her to take the blessing while she can get it, because with Bobbi gone and all but a cat to keep him company surely one day he will crack and she'll be the only one to deal with it.

She said, with grace, that she'd done it before.)

Othertimes, when Clint works earlier or just plain sleeps in, he'll come after work instead. Natasha will make two more drinks and then close everything up—he enjoys watching her do it, even, from the closest table to the kitchen, watching her wash everything and hum to herself. She looks so blessedly content here, Clint's heart swells.

Their job before, as something like the government's lackeys, had taken its toll on her, he knows. She may have been solemn and lost from the start, scared and wounded and lost, but releasing a war prisoner only to make them fight in the same war that doomed them was hardly considered a mercy. Killing and lying and stealing were still killing, lying and stealing when done for the good side.

Clint would know this. They started from the same place, gone through it all together, the good parts and the bad parts and the parts that were nightmares now and worse then. They even left at the same time—when Clint married Bobbi. Natasha had said that she didn't want to stay with the agency unless Clint was there to interrupt by making dumb jokes during important meetings, but he was flattered anyway.

He would have never guessed that she'd find her peace at a cafe in the middle of New York, half-funded by Tony Stark. But every time he came and she'd look happy or sad or exhausted, only never—never lost, never_ broken_.

(He'd thought he'd found his peace in a small but comfortable house with a woman he'd loved, and an office job, and a dog that stole his pizza. Bobbi didn't want peace, though, and Clint didn't want drama, and in the end he supposes it was a more clashing of needs than a clashing of people. Clint needed a rest, needed a break, and Bobbi needed to have air under her wings and places to fly and missions to go on and someone who could fight by her side.

In all of his previous love for her, though, in all of his justifications, he never quite got why she'd taken the dog. He didn't blame her for anything else, but come on, _really?_)

Where he was as lost as he started, Natasha had seemingly reached her end. He was happy for her, and so proud, so that if he was jealous of her content, then he could dismiss it and squash it with no hesitation.

They're like that now, both of them sitting alone in her cafe. It's like old times, he thinks. The both of them alone but for each other, against the world.

"So," he says, smiling faintly through a sip of coffee, "How are—things?"

Natasha smiles and shrugs, as if to say nothing fantastic, but the smile isn't a lie nor insincere.

"They're fine," she says. There's a pause, then, "I found out what Steve draws."

Clint's eyebrows furrow.

"Steve?" He can't recall any Steves that they both knew.

"The blonde man who sits by the window and draws," she clarifies, and it takes a second for Clint to think of who she's talking about, but vaguely recalls seeing him some mornings. He hadn't known she was on first name basis with any of her customers.

"Oh, him," he says. "What does he draw?"

"Strangers."

"Strangers?"

"People he doesn't know," Natasha says. Clint almost jumps in and tells her plainly that yes, Nat, he knows what the word 'stranger' means, but Natasha hums before he can. "I can't figure it out. He says he doesn't draw people he knows. But...I don't know."

Clint takes a sip of his coffee. (With milk and sugar, because he's always had a sweet tooth and coffee was just too bitter on its own.) He's not sure, exactly, how to reply to that.

"Maybe..." Clint starts, "Maybe he doesn't like to because it's like, they'll have expectations of you?" That's what makes sense to him, at least. He's never been an artistic sort of person, or able to draw much besides stick figures and chicken-scratch handwriting.

Natasha hums thoughtfully and raps her knuckle on the table.

"He wouldn't have to show them, would he?" she says, her eyebrows drawn. Something Clint's always liked about her was her love, it seemed, of learning about people. She'd used it cruelly, to criminals, to the good people she'd told him about in nothing more than a shamed whisper, but at the heart of her talent was a simple and innate love of understanding people.

(He wonders if it's because no one has ever understood her. He must be the closest too, after all they've been through, but even he still can't quite capture her. And, he wonders with some amount of fear, how much she understands him.)

"I guess he wouldn't," Clint says, as to not leave her unanswered, but in truth, he doesn't know how to keep up the conversation. He doesn't have the love, the passion, of understanding that she does. He prefers to let people live as they want—if that's raw and exposed to anyone willing to give a look, then fine. If that's hidden behind every wall they can build, then, there's obviously a reason that they don't want them to all come crashing to the ground. "I mean—was he good?"

Natasha shrugs again, and her eyes flicker back to him from where they'd wondered. Her eyebrows relax and she smiles quickly. "I only saw the one drawing, but I'd say—he's good enough, I think. Actually, that's unfair, if it was a work in progress. He was good."

Clint hums and nods, hoping she'll realize how inept he is at these sort of conversations, or else continue to talk. He has no problem with sitting back and listening to her talk, even if he knows it's not likely that she will.

"Anyway," she says, andGod bless her and how well she picks up on things.

"Anyway," Clint repeats, and then takes a sip of coffee. It's not exactly an awkward silence yet, but it could easily become one. He's trying to think of something to say when he sets his coffee back down, when some of the hot liquid splashes back over the edge of it on to his hand and burns.

"Aw, coffee," he says, looking at the mug mournfully and wiping his hand on his pants.

Natasha laughs slightly, shaking her head at him.

"Don't blame the coffee," she says. "It's not the coffee's fault."

Clint looks at her for a moment to frown pointedly, then, "Aww, _mug._"

Natasha arches an eyebrow, an amused smile on her face. "I was thinking that it was probably more your hand's fault."

Clint harrumphed and and examined his hand, as if it were some great injury. "'S not _all_ the mug's fault, then."

"Is it broken?" Natasha says over her mug of green tea. Clint rolls his eyes at her.

"No," he says setting his hand back on the table. "It's not broken. Just severely mutilated."

Natasha snorts. "Well, besides your pitifully injured hand, _how_ are you?"

Clint taps his thumb on the table. To tell or not to tell? On one hand...she'd find out eventually, she always did, and he'd feel bad for keeping it from her. On the other, he didn't want to burden her with the news.

"Okay." Clint begins, and then, before he can regret it, continues, "Barney called."

Natasha almost flinches.

"I'm sorry," she responds, earnestly. His brother has only ever called once while he's known Natasha, and yet he's already got the reputation. Clint would feel bad—and he _does,_ even, that Natasha's only impression of Barney had been bailing him out of jail but he isn't sure how many other impressions there are to have of him. Maybe—but that was when they were both kids, when they had to stick together because there was no one else for them.

Maybe, if they had stuck together into adulthood, Barney would be okay.

Or Clint would be just as bad.

"'S'okay," says Clint, shrugging. "He didn't ask for much this time—and without Bobbi buying all those damn purses, it's not like I don't have enough." It's a very weak joke, as he and Natasha both know that his ex-wife was not the purse buying type, but he laughs gently anyway, to try and defuse the situation.

"It isn't okay," says Natasha, mouth pressed in a thin, angry line. Clint assumes it's for his belittling, or perhaps at the joke at first, but then—"It's not_ fair. _You're his little brother, for God's sake. You don't even...it's not your responsibility to take care of him. He should be taking care of _you_."

Clint sets his jaw. He's not angry at her, he couldn't be, but—he still loves Barney. He still _owes _Barney, even, and he doesn't like gossiping and grousing about him behind his back. Maybe it's some stupid sense of adoration still left from being a kid, from when Barney knew how to handle their father, when he'd teach him how to punch by letting Clint practice on himself, when in the orphanage he'd make sure Clint had enough of everything until he turned eighteen and had to leave.

(_I taught you how to care of you so I know you can, _he'd said, bags thrown over his shoulder and a worn-out smile on his face, _ I'll be okay if you'll be._)

"He took care of me," Clint says, sighing.

"He's your older brother. He has too."

"He my older...we're just—brothers. Just—leave it at that, okay?" Clint says. Age shouldn't make a difference to it, in his mind. They should take care of each other and if Barney needs money or to be bailed from jail or help with a goddamn_ algebra_ test, then as a brother, he should give it to him. It doesn't matter if he's younger, if Barney had hurt or betrayed or abandoned him. It doesn't matter if Clint doesn't have a dollar left to his name after he helps Barney.

All that matter is that they're brothers, they're all the other has left. He can't deny him this, can't_ not _help.

And if he hopes that maybe the money will help enough that Barney can get back on his feet, can be his big brother again, then—well, he's hoped farther fetched things, hasn't he?

Natasha frowns, but doesn't reply. Clint shrugs again and offers a smile, as if to say, it's okay, _I'm_ okay, but she's always been good at detecting lies and she's always cared so fiercely for him, regardless of whether or not he deserves it. She takes a sip of her tea and he takes one of his coffee, letting his eyes wander to the window.

It's raining and dark, but the streetlamps and car lights cast a artificial glow on everything. People walk past the coffee shop every once and awhile, but it's late enough it's not often. Even fewer people look over to peer inside at the cafe, at the two people sitting inside at 8pm even though there's a closed sign on the locked door. He can't help but wonder where Barney is in all of the sprawling, living, beauty and mess of New York. If he has a place to sleep, if he's got a way out of the rain. Clint doesn't worry, exactly, but he thinks of him.

Hopes, for him, that he's got a safe place.

"How much did he ask for?" Natasha asks, after a moment.

"Don't," says Clint, pressing his lips together. He doesn't move his eyes from the window.

"_How much did he ask for?"_ she repeats, her voice a decibel louder, noticeably harder, colder. She could never manage sympathy for Barney, no matter how much Clint had tried to reassure her that Barney deserved it.

"I said don't," Clint says, eyes moving to hers resolutely.

"'Don't' isn't a number, or any denomination of money."

Clint sighs.

"It's not bad, okay? I have a lot left over, now, and I'm not going to use it so it's—"

"I swear to God, Clint, if you don't tell me I'm not going to let you do it."

He might say that she can't tell him not to do anything, that it isn't her choice whether or not he helps Barney.

He just...doesn't have the energy, anymore.

"Couple hundred," he says, finally. It's _not _bad, though. He does have a lot of money now, he has a well-paying job and an already paid for house and it's not like one person can use up all that much money. A couple hundred isn't even inconvenient for him, honestly.

"What for?" Natasha presses.

"Dunno," he says, honestly. "He's not in jail, if that's where you're—he's not in jail again."

"Should he be?"

Clint rubs his forehead. Probably, maybe, he doesn't _know._

"I haven't talked to him since last time. He didn't seem to want much to do with me other than—other than bailing him out, alright? I don't know what's up with him, why he wants the money, or what he'll end up doing with it. I just know I'm going to help him if I can," he says.

"Why?" she asks, her voice soft and concerned and imploring. It hurts to hear. "He just—he keeps doing this to you, he's done it before, and he'll keep doing it as long as he's around. It's not fair. You can't pick up his messes without so much as a _thanks,_ from him. You're enabling him to keep going on like this."

Clint sighs and shakes his head heavily. He knows that she's just being caring of him, that she just doesn't want him to be hurt. But it's nothing she can help, and he doesn't need it right now.

"Look," he reasons, "What you're doing right now? Being protective over me? Barney did that. All while we were kids. We—there was a lot for me to be protected from, then. And he did it. He didn't leave me to get beat up when he could stop it. I can't—I have to do the same for him."

Natasha sighs, too, and her face looks softer now, if sad. "I'd take a bullet for you, you know that. I just—I don't want you to be hurt by someone you won't allow me to hurt back."

Clint shakes his head and chuckles at her.

"You and him both," he says, sounding like he meant it more for himself than her.

"He'd take a bullet for you?" Natasha asks, almost incredulously.

Clint doesn't answer for a moment, his eyes straying back out to the windows. The instinctive 'yes' falters and dies on his lips. Would he? He knows at least, that at one point, Barney would've. Knows that at one time, not even a second would pass before he'd answer yes, with such certainty and trust. Would he now, though? After all they'd been through?

(_I know you can,_ Barney had said. Clint at the time hadn't thought that meant he'd _need_ to.)

Clint took a breath.

"Yeah," he says, turning his head back towards her to look in her eyes, as if that would make what he was about to say anymore true, "He might be the one behind the barrel, but—yeah, he would."

Natasha looks considering, then her face softens and she nods minutely.

"You must really love your brother," she says. If there's a berating tone to her voice, or at very least a confused one, Clint chooses to ignore it. Just blinks and twitches his mouth into a slight smile that lasts only a second longer, and doesn't say anything in answer.

(When he gets home that evening, Barney's waiting at his doorstep.

For the first time in ten years, Clint hugs his brother.)

* * *

Natasha enjoyed running her cafe.

She really, truly, _did_.

It was something of a shock to her that she could be so content in a small building her own money didn't even pay for, making coffees and pastries and sandwiches. That the same monotony that damned her before was now a comfort to her. There was rhythm, a pattern to her days she'd never had the luxury of having before.

Maybe she was meant for a boring life. Was a love of difference and a hatred of pattern something that could run out, instead of a personality detail that ran infinitely? She once thought—_knew_—that the desire for intrigue, for a childish idea of adventure, was surely insatiable. Perhaps her well of it had finally emptied, or else had cracked from strain and spilled itself dry.

Whatever and however the reason for it was, she enjoyed running her cafe.

She still learned about people, but average, normal people. Not threats and spies and terrorists.

She knew of an old Russian woman, how she'd immigrated her in her youth and never quite found pastries like Natasha made them, save for herself, but her hands were too old to stir, she said. She knew the Russian woman's grandson was in the Navy, and her granddaughter played cello.

She knew about Tony Stark—more, perhaps, than most people did.

She knew about Steve. How he'd been in the Army, how he has a girlfriend who is also in the Army. How he draws strangers because the idea of capturing a whole person in a drawing was impossible, in his mind.

Maybe that's why she liked it—you met interesting people, but they were normal, average, non-dangerous interesting.

Though, Natasha wouldn't go so far as to say that she was happy. Happiness was something that eluded her for many years, but contentedness was almost the same thing, considering. It was certainly far more than she deserved.

* * *

Loki doesn't know why he picked New York to run to.

It'd have been so much easier to pick up and move to Paris, maybe, or Ireland or Scotland or somewhere that didn't involve getting a all-be-damned _visa_.

Except everywhere else had seemed so desperately close—two hours, three hours by train and entirely too reachable by his family. (Not-family? Adopted family? He hadn't the foggiest what to call them now.) Seemed like at any given moment they could knock on the door, ring the bell, and he'd have to face them and he'd tried so hard in the past week and managed, even, to succeed.

America, New York, felt so distant from them. Though by plane it could still be reached in mere hours, the ocean between them was a comfort.

New York felt safe.

Since he rented a furnished flat, he hadn't bothered to bring many of his own things with him. He packed a suitcase as full of his own clothes as he could manage, his electronics, toiletries, but nothing personal.

Even after he'd unpacked everything he'd brought, it would take scarcely a half an hour to make it look as if no one had ever lived there at all.

Maybe that was better, considering his visa expired in three months, anyway. Three months shouldn't be enough time to grow attached to any of it. There was no point, when eventually he'd have to go back to England, back to his flat there, when he would have to go back and face—everyone.

He pointedly tries not to think of that.

For the first week he was there, Loki hardly went anywhere. He went grocery shopping, of course, and then out again when he realized that he didn't have dishware to make anything in. But though he'd only been out twice, he already felt the off-ness of being in a different country, of a different world. People looked at him after they'd heard him speak, curious or appreciative of his accent, and his inherent fumbling with the different money was also all too noticeable. Though no one commented on either, it still made him feel clumsy and different.

Because of this, Loki mainly just...worked. His job as a computer programmer was done mostly if not totally on the computer, at his flat, and so there was really no where else to go, but for the basic necessities.

(He supposes he could explore the area, but in truth, he's afraid of it. Afraid he'll like it, afraid he won't. Afraid that he'll turn the corner and somehow, somehow, see Thor coming around it.)

Only, though perhaps he'd not sought it out as much as Thor or—or Baldur, he needed human interaction as much as anyone else. Being alone with yourself was hardly ever pleasant, exactly, but especially now Loki had no desire to be able to focus his sole attention to his thoughts.

So, with perhaps some uneasiness about him, he ventured out into the city.


End file.
